Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations condemned monopoly.
Yes, and the monopolies he was talking about were government chartered monopolies.
Smith didn't seem to think that free markets would produce significant, stable monopolies by themselves, therefore he didn't believe that government regulation was necessary to counteract such monopolies.
The notion of "natural monopolies" was invented by Mill, and it's unclear to this day whether they exist at all in the real world.
People say they want a free market, but what they probably want is a competitive market.
Sure, people want more and more companies competing for their business because that lowers prices. However, markets can be "too competitive", with prices too low and too many sellers. In that case, the market needs to become less competitive by competitors leaving the market. That's a good thing, it makes the market more efficient.
Huh? Adam Smith's definitions pretty much agreed with mine.
Furthermore, Adam Smith generally advocated free markets. He went as far as pointing out that slavery is a result of government regulation, and that free markets would have resulted in its dissolution.
Adam Smith did advocate some limited degree of government regulation. I don't automatically object to all government regulation either. I'm just pointing out that when government regulates a market, that market ceases to be a free market.
According to you, locking people out of a market and creating a near-monoply so you can make a few more dollars is fine, right? After all, you're not forcing them to do anything, so what's the problem?
Your premise is wrong: proprietary standards do not "lock people out of a market". Just look at chargers: Apple has had proprietary chargers for a decade; does that mean that people can only get iPhones now? Of course not. In fact, the proprietary nature of their products has cost them market share.
They just can't sell stuff and compete with you,
Why "can't they just sell stuff and compete with you"? How does Apple's lightning connector keep you from selling Android phones with USB connectors?
The "Free Market" has no monopolies (including no patents, no copyrights, and no proprietary standards -- obviously, since all of those are "you can't make/sell this" restrictions) and an infinite number of competing companies producing any particular product
You're mixing up the definition of a free market with consequences of free markets and common economic assumptions when analyzing free market models.
Having a single standard means more competition, so it is much closer to the Free Market ideal than multiple proprietary standards.
Maximizing competition is not a defining characteristic of a free market. It isn't even usually desirable or efficient.
While governments can sometimes interfere with the price of goods, monopolies are guaranteed to interfere because they can set the supply (and therefore the price) to whatever is most profitable.
Luckily, free markets do not produce stable monopolies.
If that were the case, it would be called a "low barrier to entry market". But it is called a "free market" because its participants are "free" to engage in economic transactions as they choose. You don't get to redefine that.
In fact, reducing barriers to entry through government coercion makes a market non-free because some people need to be forced to engage in economic transactions they wouldn't engage in voluntarily.
Can you give us an example of an unregulated "free market"? I mean one that actually exists, or has existed.
Well, as a simple example, black markets by their very nature are unregulated. New markets generally also start out unregulated and free; many Internet offerings were originally unregulated. There are historical examples as well. But even if there weren't, what do you think that would show?
Who decided that the voltage coming out of the wall socket should be 120v at 60hz?
(It's 110V 60Hz in the US.) The answer to that is complicated and involves technology, lobbying, economics, and patents. By itself, it's only a convention, but it then became mandatory as part of building codes and public safety regulations.
Where does the silly notion that there are a certain number of ounces to the pound come from?
Those aren't mandatory regulations, they are simply measures that people can choose to use or not.
Why shouldn't I be able to sell 14oz "pounds" of coffee?
Yes, why shouldn't you be able to?
And what do you think the word "government" means?
There are many forms of government and many definitions of government, but all government involves some notion of a "society" and the use of force or threat of force of some members of that society against other members of society, ostensibly for "the benefit of society as a whole".
Let me leave you with this quote from Bastiat:
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.
Objecting to government-mandated standards is not the same as objecting to standards. Having standard voltages and frequencies, safety standards, and measurement standards is a good thing, but there are many ways and better ways to provide those than through government coercion.
The underlying supply, mor important, demand, does not change, just because the suppliers need to meet a certain standard.
If the government imposes standards for chargers (or anything else), buyers and sellers are not free to engage in transactions without government interference; that makes the market a regulated market, not a free market. I'm sorry if you don't understand that, but your analysis is, to use your own words, "nonsense".
Furthermore, government standards can very much affect supply and demand. For example, housing standards generally lower supply of housing. Standards also frequently lower demand by making products less attractive or more cumbersome to use.
And by all being forced to adhere to the same standard, a single supplier can not abuse his artificial monopoly.
If you consider a proprietary charger plug an "artificial monopoly", the term "monopoly" has lost all meaning.
The fact is that very few of us are in it just for the love of the game, okay?
There is nothing wrong with being in it for profits; what is wrong is to try to derive your profits from coercion, via rent seeking and corruption.
News Flash: Pretty much everyone and everything is "evil", depending on what your values are or the lens you view life through.
Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't clear about that: voluntary interactions between people are good, forcing people to do stuff against their will in order to profit is evil. Clear enough now?
The EU has mandated USB-style chargers by law for a couple of years now. These regulations do not prohibit proprietary charge connectors, just the ability to charge a phone from USB through an adapter.
A free market is a market economy system in which the prices for goods and services are set freely by consent between vendors and consumers, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority.
Government mandated standards may or may not be a good idea, but they are certainly not "the basis of a free market" because they represent an intervention by government in the forces of supply and demand.
and proprietary "standards" are the basis of proprietary lock-in.
Sometimes they are. But proprietary lock-in is compatible with a free market.
New-book retailers: "But won't someone think of muh profits?!"... if Amazon eventually
Your ideological blinders are showing. Of course, retailers and Amazon maximize profit, but they are doing a good job at getting out books cheaply.
The evil actors in the book publishing business are primarily publishers and secondarily agents and top-selling authors; they are trying to manipulate the market to their advantage, profit at the expense of small players, keep prices artificially high, and maintain monopolies. They are the ones who push for outrageous changes to copyright law, for government subsidies, and destroying the public domain.
This is people selling all the old paper books they don't need anymore (obviously, there are still people buying them at some low price). I think it's no more than a temporary resurgence.
The complaints began rolling in almost immediately. The Hue system was supposed to be compatible with an industry standard called ZigBee, but the bulbs that Philips cut off were ZigBee compliant. [...] Because companies can enforce anti-competitive behavior this way, there’s a litany of things that just don’t exist, even though they would make life easier for consumers in significant ways.
The trouble with ZigBee is that "ZigBee compliant" doesn't mean different devices will actually work together. Z-Wave, a more restrictive and more proprietary system, actually works better. And that illustrates what's wrong with Schneier's reasoning: forcing platforms and protocols to be open does not necessarily make life easier for consumers, because something being proprietary can result in better user experiences, as the owner of that technology has a stronger financial interest in policing it. Apple devices are another example of this. Many technologies that we now think of as "open" started off as proprietary.
Nevertheless, I think the DMCA is overreach and unnecessary: there shouldn't be legal penalties for reverse engineering or making compatible implementations. On the other hand, we should also not mandate open protocols and not scream bloody murder every time someone comes up with a proprietary system or puts up barriers to interoperability.
As for home automation, there is no "monopoly" and no sign of one: there are a dozen different standards, some open, some mildly proprietary, and some completely proprietary, plus hundreds of vendors. Let the market decide which model works best. I don't think it will be full ZigBee, because that "standard" is a mess.
There are modes of transport with very short ranges, but are have very useful in limited scenarios.
Yes, Twitter is good for status updates: "Cat's resting", "Had a nice Xmas dinner with family", etc.
Expressing political views? Not so much. But with a bit of wit, and thought, I imagine one could express a political though succinctly.
Of course, you can "express a political thought succinctly", but the 140 character limit limits you to social signaling and declaring your tribal membership. What you can't do is hold reasoned discussions, which is why Twitter has such a problem with what they call "trolling".
Too bad that your link goes to some flashy site that just shouts some numbers in big, bold text, but doesn't actually support what you're trying to say.
Go check the data yourself: the rate of police killings varies randomly over time and has not been increasing significantly; furthermore, police killings are distributed highly non-uniformly across the country and concentrated in specific communities.
Democracy is not perfect, but it's the best system of governance we've come up with to date, quoth the thatcher, nevermore.
Actually, it goes back to at least Churchill. It's also worth pointing out that there are many forms of democracy. The kind of democracy that exists in Europe and the US was generally considered corrupt and oligarchic by the ancient Greeks, and for good reason (they used a form of sortition).
So local law enforcement agencies will now have big holes in their budgets. So anyone want to guess how they will fill these holes? Raise local taxes . . . ? Raise the fines for traffic tickets, and hand out more tickets . . . ?
Any of those are better than asset forfeiture, which targets people arbitrarily and robs them.
You also get your trial (due process) after your person has been seized (arrested), so I'm not really getting the basis of your argument.
Arrests are temporary leading up to the trial and require a judicial warrant; the trial must occur speedily, there is a presumption of innocence, and the burden of proof is on the government. Long term incarceration is only possible after a trial ("due process").
Asset forfeitures are indefinite and are not part of any judicial process, so there is no "due process". That makes them different from both pre-trial arrests and incarcerations.
Well see, yes and no. Asset forfeiture came about as a means of stopping organized crime
Their purpose is irrelevant to their constitutionality.
The entire reason asset forfeiture is still legal is because technically, you do have recourse if the police take your money. The problem is getting the proof together to do so.
No, they are not legal according to the US Constitution: taking away stuff from people without due process is not one of the enumerated powers. That by itself is sufficient to render it illegal, but this is explicitly reinforced by the 5th and 14th Amendments: nor shall any person . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. When police take your stuff and say "prove that you own it", that is not "due process of the law", it isn't "process of the law" of any form, it is entirely arbitrary.
I hope Twitter will be around for a long time. It's a honey pot for people who think they can engage in social or political commentary in 140 characters or less. The more these people are distracted and kept away from the rest of the Internet, the better.
Apart from mindless regurgitation of cute aphorism is there any actual reason that apathy is better than good intentions?
Well, as long as you don't act upon your "good intentions", you're OK. When you do act upon your good intentions, you're often going to cause more harm than good, since it is unlikely that you have a good understanding of what the people you intend to help actually want or need.
Even if they are bit excluded from voting by some minor criminal record from their past, waiting for the slow wheels of democracy to turn isn't really an option when you are in danger of being murdered by a cop every day.
There is no "wheels" that need to turn. Ferguson, Detroit, and other cities have had ample opportunities to kick out their government. Of course, like sheep, they keep voting for the same Democratic machinery and suffering the consequences.
It's not just a local issue either, the same problem exists in many places and by linking those incidents by their common causes it has helped to start fixing them. This is especially true in majority white areas where engagement with white voters has been key to creating political pressure to fix things.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, and the monopolies he was talking about were government chartered monopolies.
Smith didn't seem to think that free markets would produce significant, stable monopolies by themselves, therefore he didn't believe that government regulation was necessary to counteract such monopolies.
The notion of "natural monopolies" was invented by Mill, and it's unclear to this day whether they exist at all in the real world.
Sure, people want more and more companies competing for their business because that lowers prices. However, markets can be "too competitive", with prices too low and too many sellers. In that case, the market needs to become less competitive by competitors leaving the market. That's a good thing, it makes the market more efficient.
Huh? Adam Smith's definitions pretty much agreed with mine.
Furthermore, Adam Smith generally advocated free markets. He went as far as pointing out that slavery is a result of government regulation, and that free markets would have resulted in its dissolution.
Adam Smith did advocate some limited degree of government regulation. I don't automatically object to all government regulation either. I'm just pointing out that when government regulates a market, that market ceases to be a free market.
Your premise is wrong: proprietary standards do not "lock people out of a market". Just look at chargers: Apple has had proprietary chargers for a decade; does that mean that people can only get iPhones now? Of course not. In fact, the proprietary nature of their products has cost them market share.
Why "can't they just sell stuff and compete with you"? How does Apple's lightning connector keep you from selling Android phones with USB connectors?
You're mixing up the definition of a free market with consequences of free markets and common economic assumptions when analyzing free market models.
Maximizing competition is not a defining characteristic of a free market. It isn't even usually desirable or efficient.
Luckily, free markets do not produce stable monopolies.
No, that's not "another definition of 'free market'". That's a "competitive market" and a "market with low barriers to entry".
How can a market in which all transactions are voluntary possibly be "rigged"? What does "rigging" even mean in such a situation?
(Don't give me the example of people trying to "corner the market" or "get a monopoly by buying up all competitors", that just doesn't work.)
If that were the case, it would be called a "low barrier to entry market". But it is called a "free market" because its participants are "free" to engage in economic transactions as they choose. You don't get to redefine that.
In fact, reducing barriers to entry through government coercion makes a market non-free because some people need to be forced to engage in economic transactions they wouldn't engage in voluntarily.
Well, as a simple example, black markets by their very nature are unregulated. New markets generally also start out unregulated and free; many Internet offerings were originally unregulated. There are historical examples as well. But even if there weren't, what do you think that would show?
(It's 110V 60Hz in the US.) The answer to that is complicated and involves technology, lobbying, economics, and patents. By itself, it's only a convention, but it then became mandatory as part of building codes and public safety regulations.
Those aren't mandatory regulations, they are simply measures that people can choose to use or not.
Yes, why shouldn't you be able to?
There are many forms of government and many definitions of government, but all government involves some notion of a "society" and the use of force or threat of force of some members of that society against other members of society, ostensibly for "the benefit of society as a whole".
Let me leave you with this quote from Bastiat:
Objecting to government-mandated standards is not the same as objecting to standards. Having standard voltages and frequencies, safety standards, and measurement standards is a good thing, but there are many ways and better ways to provide those than through government coercion.
It says that, but it's actually a lie. In the US, publishers cannot restrict fair use.
If the government imposes standards for chargers (or anything else), buyers and sellers are not free to engage in transactions without government interference; that makes the market a regulated market, not a free market. I'm sorry if you don't understand that, but your analysis is, to use your own words, "nonsense".
Furthermore, government standards can very much affect supply and demand. For example, housing standards generally lower supply of housing. Standards also frequently lower demand by making products less attractive or more cumbersome to use.
If you consider a proprietary charger plug an "artificial monopoly", the term "monopoly" has lost all meaning.
There is nothing wrong with being in it for profits; what is wrong is to try to derive your profits from coercion, via rent seeking and corruption.
Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't clear about that: voluntary interactions between people are good, forcing people to do stuff against their will in order to profit is evil. Clear enough now?
The EU has mandated USB-style chargers by law for a couple of years now. These regulations do not prohibit proprietary charge connectors, just the ability to charge a phone from USB through an adapter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Given technologies like USB-C and various wireless chargers, it's not clear that these regulations really are very meaningful.
They are not:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Government mandated standards may or may not be a good idea, but they are certainly not "the basis of a free market" because they represent an intervention by government in the forces of supply and demand.
Sometimes they are. But proprietary lock-in is compatible with a free market.
Your ideological blinders are showing. Of course, retailers and Amazon maximize profit, but they are doing a good job at getting out books cheaply.
The evil actors in the book publishing business are primarily publishers and secondarily agents and top-selling authors; they are trying to manipulate the market to their advantage, profit at the expense of small players, keep prices artificially high, and maintain monopolies. They are the ones who push for outrageous changes to copyright law, for government subsidies, and destroying the public domain.
This is people selling all the old paper books they don't need anymore (obviously, there are still people buying them at some low price). I think it's no more than a temporary resurgence.
The trouble with ZigBee is that "ZigBee compliant" doesn't mean different devices will actually work together. Z-Wave, a more restrictive and more proprietary system, actually works better. And that illustrates what's wrong with Schneier's reasoning: forcing platforms and protocols to be open does not necessarily make life easier for consumers, because something being proprietary can result in better user experiences, as the owner of that technology has a stronger financial interest in policing it. Apple devices are another example of this. Many technologies that we now think of as "open" started off as proprietary.
Nevertheless, I think the DMCA is overreach and unnecessary: there shouldn't be legal penalties for reverse engineering or making compatible implementations. On the other hand, we should also not mandate open protocols and not scream bloody murder every time someone comes up with a proprietary system or puts up barriers to interoperability.
As for home automation, there is no "monopoly" and no sign of one: there are a dozen different standards, some open, some mildly proprietary, and some completely proprietary, plus hundreds of vendors. Let the market decide which model works best. I don't think it will be full ZigBee, because that "standard" is a mess.
Yes, Twitter is good for status updates: "Cat's resting", "Had a nice Xmas dinner with family", etc.
Of course, you can "express a political thought succinctly", but the 140 character limit limits you to social signaling and declaring your tribal membership. What you can't do is hold reasoned discussions, which is why Twitter has such a problem with what they call "trolling".
Too bad that your link goes to some flashy site that just shouts some numbers in big, bold text, but doesn't actually support what you're trying to say.
Go check the data yourself: the rate of police killings varies randomly over time and has not been increasing significantly; furthermore, police killings are distributed highly non-uniformly across the country and concentrated in specific communities.
What a predictable and trite response.
Some car trips are also shorter than a mile; that doesn't mean that a car that has a range of just a mile is actually a useful car.
Actually, it goes back to at least Churchill. It's also worth pointing out that there are many forms of democracy. The kind of democracy that exists in Europe and the US was generally considered corrupt and oligarchic by the ancient Greeks, and for good reason (they used a form of sortition).
Any of those are better than asset forfeiture, which targets people arbitrarily and robs them.
Arrests are temporary leading up to the trial and require a judicial warrant; the trial must occur speedily, there is a presumption of innocence, and the burden of proof is on the government. Long term incarceration is only possible after a trial ("due process").
Asset forfeitures are indefinite and are not part of any judicial process, so there is no "due process". That makes them different from both pre-trial arrests and incarcerations.
Their purpose is irrelevant to their constitutionality.
No, they are not legal according to the US Constitution: taking away stuff from people without due process is not one of the enumerated powers. That by itself is sufficient to render it illegal, but this is explicitly reinforced by the 5th and 14th Amendments: nor shall any person . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. When police take your stuff and say "prove that you own it", that is not "due process of the law", it isn't "process of the law" of any form, it is entirely arbitrary.
I hope Twitter will be around for a long time. It's a honey pot for people who think they can engage in social or political commentary in 140 characters or less. The more these people are distracted and kept away from the rest of the Internet, the better.
Well, as long as you don't act upon your "good intentions", you're OK. When you do act upon your good intentions, you're often going to cause more harm than good, since it is unlikely that you have a good understanding of what the people you intend to help actually want or need.
There is no "wheels" that need to turn. Ferguson, Detroit, and other cities have had ample opportunities to kick out their government. Of course, like sheep, they keep voting for the same Democratic machinery and suffering the consequences.
Nice theory. No evidence.